Chapter 2
It was still early, but the arena was already a flurry of activity.
There were more than a dozen cars in the lot already, but I made a beeline to one near the far corner of the lot.
The beat-up black car had seen better days.
The dirt on the outside made it clear that Dominic had been to his parents’ cottage over the weekend.
Otherwise, there was no way he would have driven in with it in that state.
Dom was strangely obsessed with the car wash, something I frequently teased him about.
I would joke that he was like a child who loved to see the rainbow coloured soaps running down the windshield.
A quick peek in one window showed that the inside of the car was as spotless as ever, even though the outside didn’t match.
The first time I’d let him in my car, I’d felt self-conscious about the mess in the back, even though it hadn’t been that bad.
It was dumb and I knew it. We’d already been partners for five years at that point.
He didn't need to look in my car to know he was the more organized of us.
I grabbed both of my bags from the trunk and slid them over my shoulder before I made my way inside.
I recognized a few of the other cars that were in the lot.
One of the ones closest to the entrance belonged to our choreographer, Olga Malinova.
I also spotted the cars of the Russian pair that would pose our biggest threat in competition.
Come to think of it, they were probably working together first thing.
As soon as I was in the arena, I made a beeline for the locker room. One of the American girls who also worked with my coach greeted me. "Is Dominic in already?" she asked as she pulled her brown hair into a bun.
The interest in her voice irritated me. We needed to focus on our skating, not on how attractive people around the rink may or may not be.
“I’ve seen his car, but not him.” I glanced at myself in the mirror, making sure I didn’t look like a complete mess.
“He’s probably looking for me, actually, so I should get going.
” Since the weather was nice, I would bet that Dom had probably gone for an early morning run and had been waiting for me to finish up ever since.
I had barely left the locker room when I heard a booming voice call, “Hazel!” I turned on my heel to see Dom, both hands raised above his head, his right hand gripping a red coffee cup.
His face had broken into a big grin, reaching all the way up to his dark eyes.
“Are you ready to make this new routine our bitch?” He stopped walking, waiting for me to catch up to him.
I nodded and grinned back at him, the irritation I'd been fighting back all morning melting away. His enthusiasm was infectious. “I see the caffeine has already kicked in,” I said, pointing to his cup.
He laughed. “It’s the only way to survive,” he replied. He took a long swig, as if to emphasize his point. “I still don’t get how you don’t need it first thing.”
“And I don’t get how you’ve been drinking coffee for the last six years without it stunting your growth,” I retorted. He had a solid nine inches on me, forcing me to crane my neck if I wanted to look him in the eyes.
I could still remember the first time he had brought coffee to practice.
Back then, he loaded it with tons of cream and sugar and insisted he liked the taste.
He’d refused to admit otherwise, even after I’d caught him wrinkling his nose after some of his sips.
I’d asked why he bothered to drink it if he didn’t like it, but Dom had insisted that he would learn to love coffee.
It seemed stupid to fourteen-year-old me and it didn’t seem any smarter now at twenty.
Dom had teased that when I was two years older, I would be much wiser.
We stepped into the practice room one after the other. I held the door open for a moment as I waited for Dom. He finished his coffee with one long sip and tossed his cup in the trash. “What happened to all of your reusable mugs?” I asked.
“I may or may not have left two of them at my parents’ cottage this weekend.” His eyes met mine. "What’s that smirk for?”
“Nothing,” I said as I made my way to the mats near the centre of the room. After all these years, there was no need to expand on it.
“Not nothing,” Dom said. He came to stand in front of me, looking at me intensely. “What’s so funny?” His head was cocked to the side, dark hair falling across his forehead.
“I just knew you’d been there this weekend. The outside of your car is filthy.”
He let out a low groan. “Don’t remind me. I meant to go to the car wash, but I hit construction on the way back and I got in late. I didn’t even unpack. I just left everything in the living room and went to bed.”
I smirked again, this time on purpose, because I knew it would bother him. “You are so predictable.”
“You should like that,” Dom said, putting his hands in the pockets of his fitted sweatpants. “If I wasn’t predictable, you’d fall on your face. Unless you want to break your nose, in which case I would gladly oblige and become much more unpredictable. Spice things up a bit.”
I gave him a playful shove. “You know that’s not what I meant. Don’t be an idiot.”
“Keep talking to me like that and I’m going to find another partner,” he said sternly. His dark eyes twinkled in sharp contrast to his words.
The empty threat made me hold back an eye roll. “If you think you can go to the Winter Games with a new partner, be my guest,” I said. I leaned forward, starting my stretching routine by grabbing my toes.
“It’s happened before.” Dom sat down on the floor in front of me and began stretching as he spoke.
There was plenty of free space, but he liked us to stay close together while we got ready to skate.
It made sense when we were at competitions and surrounded by people.
In here our conversation didn’t need to be shouted, but the habit had stuck.
With somebody else, the constant close proximity would be annoying.
With him, I found it reassuring. We spent all of our time on the ice within reach of each other.
We might as well start the day that way, too.
While I couldn’t argue with his point, I had to point out the terrible odds of it happening. Of all the gold medalists, I could only think of one pair who were new partners. With my right leg pulled up over my head, I asked, “Do you really want to take that risk?”
“Hey, I like risks. I trust you to spin around with a blade near my face,” Dom argued.
The muscles in his arms flexed. I had heard some of the younger girl skaters gossiping about his arms before, but they weren’t novel for me.
Not only had I seen them for years, I had been carried in them thousands of times.
It had been enough to fluster me at first, but I was long past that.
It sounded sensual to some people, but they weren’t thinking about how sweaty we could get after a long skate.
“I am a two-time national champion. I think I know how to spin without cutting your precious face,” I retorted.
“It is precious, isn’t it?” Dom put his hand up against his cheek and did his best to look innocent. “But I trusted twelve-year-old Hazel to do side-by-side spins, too. You definitely weren’t any sort of champion back then.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed, letting go of my leg. “That’s rude.”
He gave me his best shit-eating grin. “It’s true.”
I tried to look grumpier than I felt. “Still rude,” I retorted, switching the leg I was stretching.
“Especially since the reason you started pairs is that they didn’t think you were strong enough to continue as a singles skater.
You only really started going places after that dumb twelve-year-old showed you a thing or two. ”
“I prefer to think that they knew I was one of the only people who would be able to handle you,” Dom said.
Truthfully, both things would have contributed to the decision that had brought us together as partners.
My coach at the time had been a woman in her late twenties.
To me at twelve, she had seemed so much older and more mature than she probably was.
She had been the one to broach the subject of letting me try pairs skating.
I had been a tiny little thing back then, not even five feet tall and as thin as a rail.
I had dreamed about developing curves to fit in with the other girls at school.
My frame must have contributed to the idea that even a teenage boy could lift a pipsqueak like me.
I had been so excited that my mother had agreed to talk to my father about letting me try it.
Despite her fears about having a boy not much older than me trying to carry me around the ice while balancing on a pair of tiny blades, my parents discussed it.
Dad had agreed and, not long after, I was told that I could meet a potential partner.
It was a cold winter day and already dark outside, even though my mother and I had left for the arena just after I got off the bus from school.
It was then that I was introduced to a gangly fourteen-year-old boy with thick eyebrows above brown eyes and shaggy, dark hair that desperately needed a haircut.
I eyed him shyly, intimidated in the presence of a cute high school boy, when my coach introduced us.
“Dominic Hughes, this is Hazel Pierce. Hazel, Dom. We thought we would try you two together, since you’re both new.”
He intimidated me, but I didn’t hesitate before reaching out to shake his outstretched hand.